Opening the case reveals the usual folded color liner notes but open these notes up and prepare to be treated to a truely gorgeous color storyboard painting by none other than Mahiro Maeda, the director of Blue Submarine Number 6 and consequently design asst. on The Vision Of Escaflowne TV series. The painting is part of an Escaflowne History notes that will run through each volume's liner notes and provide background on the world of the Escaflowne TV series.
Popping the disc in, the incredible amount of quality Bandai has put into the production of this DVD continues, with a stunning animated menu interface that combines the BGM track of a chorus chanting Escaflowne with a frequently used CG scene of space where Hitomi asks "was it a dream or a vision". Out of the stary background, dozens of tarot cards appear, a tarot card moves out of the background and becomes part of the menu where the viewer can select an episode to view. This combined with font types in the olde-english style and cursor that highlists each selection in the style of the star on the back of each of Hitomi's tarot cards. By selecting an episode from this menu the tarot card flips to the face side and a 5 sided larger (in Hitomi's deck style) star appears where each arm of the star becomes a selection of the particular segment of the episode you would like to view (opening, A, B, Ending, Next episode), in the background of this screen 5 "pie-like" portions each have video from the particualr episode cycling.
The tarot card theme continues on the trailers menu where images representing Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, Haunted Junction and Blue Sub. Number 6 appear on the face of each tarot card.
Extra music videos include the opening to the TV series "Yakusoka Wa Iranai", "Tomodachi", "Aoi Hitomi", "Hikari no Naka e" all performed by Maaya Sakamoto.
On to the episodes, the video resolution of DVD breathes new life into this series which had a very high standard of production, involving some of the most talented creators in the Anime industry such as veteran writer Hajime Yadate, Shoji Kawamori (the creator of Macross), and the unmatched musical score by Yoko Kanno. The disc includes episodes 1-4, the original Japanese Audio track, English subtitles, and the Fox Kids' (Saban) English dub track.
Bandai recently revealed that some of the inital batch of the 1st Escaflowne DVD may have been packaged without the tarot card redemption card, our review copy fell victim to this. If your Escaflowne DVD arrives minus the redemption card and you still want to take part in this offer it's being asked that you retain your sales receipt/invoice for this item. Bandai hopes to have more information available on this early next week.
The 1st Escaflowne DVD volume has schedued release date of October 3rd and will retail at $29.98.
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